wavk wrote:Select the vertices you want to be smooth/hard and press the set smooth / set solid buttons in the edit buttons.

I've asked this question before and this answer was never what I was looking for. Attis, correct me if I'm wrong, but the smoothing groups referred to work differently from the results of this answer. Smoothing groups let you select a group of faces that will be smoothed together as a whole, but _not_ with any other groups. If two groups share a set of vertices they become a kind of crease where the smoothing of one group starts and another stops. While in blender you can select different sets of vertices and hit the Set Smooth button, if any of the sets share vertices they will smooth as a contiguous region, which is not the desired effect of smoothing groups.

I've also had this issue... there is no simple way to do this currently... you currently have to split your object up and those individual objects would be smoothed. I would like to see something as simple as numbered groups, similar to in max, but the ability to have an infinite number... or even named groups where you can create your own named groups, similar to the vertex weight groups used for armature deformation.

gloume wrote:I've asked this question before and this answer was never what I was looking for. Attis, correct me if I'm wrong, but the smoothing groups referred to work differently from the results of this answer.

You are right, unfortunately.

Smoothing groups let you select a group of faces that will be smoothed together as a whole, but _not_ with any other groups. If two groups share a set of vertices they become a kind of crease where the smoothing of one group starts and another stops. While in blender you can select different sets of vertices and hit the Set Smooth button, if any of the sets share vertices they will smooth as a contiguous region, which is not the desired effect of smoothing groups.

Yes, thanks for your explanation. I was too lazy to describe smoothing groups to this extent. The problem is that this makes Blender a less useful tool for making good low poly models for games. The only workaround I found is to break up the model, and edit the smooth parts separately.

A simple example to this workaround is a cylinder. To have it correctly smoothed, the top, the bottom and the superficia have to be a different object. This way I was able to achieve a similar result as in 3DS Max.

The problem as I understand is that a vertex in 3DS Max may represent multiple real 3D engine level vertices, because one vertex may have multiple normals, and possibly colors and UVs too. On the other hand in Blender one vertex has exactly one normal as I understand.

One last note: the important point is that you can set the smoothness based for edges, not for faces or vertices. Smoothing groups were implemented this way in Wings 3D, for example. Smoothing our cylinder in Wings 3D at first one would set the whole object as smooth, then select all the edges of the top and bottom faces, and turn off smoothing for them. This method is a little more intuitive than Smoothing Groups in my opinion.

they don't have to be different objects, just different verticies along the edge.
This can be achived with the [y] key to split the mesh (kinda pulls off the selected area)
this method fails with subdividion surfaces when 3 or more of these split edges meet

yes, hardness on edges would be nice, but first there must be a edge mode
and then there will need to be edge operations
and ...
lots of work

blender has a hard/smooth flag for each face.
the best way I know of to get some hard and some soft edges is autosmooth.
and it was good.

I think what you want is called "Vertex Groups" in blender.
You can have up to 16 of them.
How to do this?

You select the vertices you want in the same group... in the F9 panel
there is a group of buttons over the "set smooth" buts. Click twice on the "New" button you see. (the first group you create will contain all the verts, -at least in tuhopuu release 25-4-2003, bug or is it just me?-)
Now go to the second group if you're not there already with the button which says "2 : mat 1" (over the "new" button ). Your verts are selected?
Then hit the "assign" button and now you can "set smooth" if you want...

Even with the different groups set to smooth individually they all smooth together.. the edges between groups should be visible and not smooth. Vertex groups help for multi textures but currently not for smoothing.